United States Supreme Court Issues Rare Last-Minute Stay for Ruben Gutierrez

The state of Texas was sched­uled to exe­cute Ruben Gutierrez (pic­tured) on July 16, 2024; how­ev­er, the United States Supreme Court issued a rare, last-minute stay of exe­cu­tion just 20 min­utes before he was sched­uled to be exe­cut­ed by lethal injec­tion. This is the first stay of exe­cu­tion grant­ed by the Supreme Court since it issued a stay for Richard Glossip in 2023. In a peti­tion filed with the Supreme Court, attor­neys for Mr. Gutierrez asked the Court to inter­vene because Texas has denied access to test­ing the crime scene DNA under state law. His attor­neys argued that var­i­ous items from the crime scene remain untest­ed and would rule Mr. Gutierrez out as the per­son respon­si­ble for the mur­der. The peti­tion sub­mit­ted to the court said that “[Mr.] Gutierrez faces not only the denial of (DNA test­ing) that he has repeat­ed­ly and con­sis­tent­ly sought for over a decade, but more­over, exe­cu­tion for a crime he did not com­mit. Not one has any inter­est in a wrong­ful exe­cu­tion.” The Texas Attorney General’s Office and Cameron County District Attorney’s Office main­tained that state law does not allow ​“for post­con­vic­tion DNA test­ing to show inno­cence of the death penal­ty and, even if it did, [Mr.] Gutierrez would not be enti­tled to it.”

In response to the court’s issuance of a stay of exe­cu­tion, Shawn Nolan, an attor­ney for Mr. Gutierrez said that ​“we are hope­ful that now the Court has stepped in to stop this exe­cu­tion, we can ulti­mate­ly accom­plish the DNA test­ing to prove that Mr. Gutierrez should not be exe­cut­ed now or in the future.” With the Supreme Court’s stay of exe­cu­tion, the court will now decide whether to review Mr. Gutierrez’s appeal request.

Mr. Gutierrez was con­vict­ed and sen­tenced to death in 1999 for con­spir­ing with two oth­er men to rob a trail­er park oper­a­tor in Brownsville, Texas, which end­ed in her death. Mr. Gutierrez has long main­tained that he did not enter the victim’s home and did not know the oth­er men intend­ed on killing Ms. Harrison. Mr. Gutierrez has spent more than a decade fight­ing to test crime scene DNA to prove that did not kill Ms. Harrison.